Netgear R7000 Wired Repeater Range Extender

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Try them. If one works the way you want, mark it in the manual. "Proof is in the pudding".

AFAIK, there's no such thing as a wired repeater. You're describing an access point (AP).

AP Mode.

There's no such thing.

You need WiFi Access Point. Your signal arrives on the wire and is broadcast out of the WiFi transmitter.

Graham J said the same thing, which is there's no such thing as a wired repeater mode. He also said to set it up in Access Point mode instead.

That might be why I am having trouble finding how to set it up as a wired repeater (which, to me, was the same as a wireless repeater, only wired).

Vlad said to set it up in "Bridge Mode" so can you just let me know what is the main difference (for my purposes) between Bridge Mode and AP mode?

I also need to use the switches on the router as Ethernet. Will setting up the Netgear R7000 as an access point allow the four ports (maybe three if I'm using one of them) to still work as an Ethernet for a nearby desktop?

In AP mode, multiple wireless devices can connect to it wirelessly, (of course), and the backhaul connection to your main router is accomplished by Ethernet cable. This is typical Access Point behavior, and is what most people want.

Bridge mode is the exact opposite, and thus unsuitable for your described situation. In Bridge Mode, your *wired* devices can be cabled to this Netgear router, and the Netgear uses a *wireless* connection as its backhaul back to your main router. I don't think that's what you want. BTW, this mode is more often called Client Mode, from what I've seen, because the Netgear would be a wireless client to the main router.

Yes. If you need more ports, just use an additional Gigabit Ethernet switch.

I set up the Netgear R7000 as a wired access point which seems to be working. Thanks for helping me in that I needed wired Access Point mode.

One question is Netgear complains when I set the 5GHz access point to a lower-than-149 channel but there's already stuff in the higher channels.

Is it really that bad such that the router complains at channel 38? The signal doesn't have to go far because that's why I had wired it!

Thank you for explaining that Bridge Mode is the opposite of what I want.

As you explained it, a computer would connect its Ethernet to the router set up in Bridge Mode, where that router would connect to the main router over Wi-Fi - which - if correct - is indeed the opposite of what I need.

Thanks. I ended up using one of the four ports on the Netgear R7000 as the "backhaul" (as you say) from my main router (which used up 1 switch port).

So that leaves me with 3 more open ports, where I will put a piece of tape over the yellow input port so that I don't accidentally use it by mistake.

Bridge mode is a private wireless connection between two devices (often to cross an obstruction such as a road or railway) so that Ethernet devices on one side can connect to Ethernet devices on the other.

In AP mode you can do exactly that: the Ethernet ports on the device are all connected to the same internal switch.

I assumed you knew that you should use a LAN port and not the yellow WAN port, so thanks for confirming that. I also assume that AP Mode automatically disabled the DHCP server in the R7000. If not, you should manually disable it.

By it's very nature, a wired router/switch is a repeater. We use them as 150'-200' repeaters if the connection MUST be cabled and is less then a few hundred feet and power is available. Over that its still wired but we use other transmission methods, such as RS 422 or

423, or optical fiber.

Well, the previous Linksys WRT54Gv5 had the WAN port covered with tape which was my reminder to set up the R7000 the same way. I actually tacked on the Linksys WRT54Gv5 to one of the three available LAN ports on the R7000 which I didn't even test to see if that access point is working as a result, as I was going to just give it to the local thrift shop otherwise.

The 1st thing I did was set the static IP address of the R7000 to one more than the static IP address of the Linksys WRT54Gv5 so they don't clash.

As for the DHCP server in the Netgear R7000, let me log into it to check because once I set it up as a wired access point, most of the settings became grayed out so there wasn't really all that much to deal with.

In "Setup", "Internet Setup", "WAN Sertup" and "LAN Setup" are all grayed out, so there's only "Wireless Setup" for choosing the access point stuff.

There's nothing you can do with DHCP anywhere, so I can't even tell you what the default is that setting it to "AP Mode" set the Netgear N7000 to.

I'm surprised it was so easy to set up - where the main stumbling block was I was trying to find a step by step guide under the name of a wired repeater, but you (and Graham) showed me that such a thing doesn't exist.

That gives me an idea, which I implemented because it was so easy once you explained that a bridge wireless client is a link between two Ethernets.

In my spare-parts box was an old Netgear WNR834Bv2 doing nothing.

Next to it was an old Windows 10 upgraded PC that can't get to Windows 11. It doesn't even have a wireless Wi-Fi card so it's only good for Ethernet.

Hey! Remember what you told me? The main Netgear N7000P has Ethernet. And this newly wired N7000 access point has Ethernet.

Instead of connecting the Ethernet output of the desktop PC to the Ethernet input of the Netgear N7000, I set up that Netgear WNR834Bv2 as a wireless bridge client. Ethernet <=== Wireless Bridge ===> Ethernet

It's got DD-WRT v3.0-r51937 mini (03/05/23) on it now set up as Basic Settings Radio Mode = Repeater Bridge Network Mode = N Only (I wasn't sure if I should mix the rest in or not) Network Configuration = Bridged

It's access point (or whatever it's called) is the "virtual" interface (whatever that's supposed to mean) named "Virtual Interfaces wl0.1 SSID".

It worked. All I did was plug in another access point and another router set up already as an access point and everything worked just fine for me!

Thanks for getting me past the initial hurdle of where to start the setup so that I could repurpose the old router as a wireless access point range extender (which I'd call a wireless repeater but nobody else calls it that).

[snip details]

It's worth mentioning that "bridge" operation can be further split into two modes.

1) Dedicated bridge: two similar wireless devices with a private wireless network between them. One might be defined as "master", the other as "slave". These are often sold as a single product containing both devices. An example might be:

The issue is further confused by describing the system as either point-to-point or point-to-multipoint.

2) Access Point and Client: two (possibly quite different) devices. The access point is often built into a router and allows clients such as laptops to connect wirelessly (to get their internet connection). The client may be a router or a wireless access point CONFIGURED IN "CLIENT" MODE. The Client is configured to communicate with the Access Point simply by specifying the SSID and security key, in the same way as you would specify those parameters in a laptop or smartphone.

Several client devices can work with the same Access Point. Client devices communicate only with the Access Point, but because the access point behaves as a network switch traffic passes through it so that any client can (potentially) connect to any other (subject to firewall settings in the laptop or smartphone.

That reminds me, while I was setting things up, the option popped up somewhere to make a choice between wireless bridge client and wireless bridge client repeater (or something like that) which, as I understood it (and I might not have understood it) allows other clients (like cell phones) to still connect to the access point coming off the main router.

Main Router Switch <===> RJ45 <===> Access Point <===> Bridge <===> PC

I just logged into the WNR834Bv2 to get the exact words DD-WRT uses: Radio Mode = Repeater Bridge

I think that means I have two things (actually three?) going on:

1. The WNR834Bv2 bridges the PC Ethernet to the Home Router Ethernet
2. The WNR834Bv2 is also acting as an access point
3. The wired Access Point that the bridge connects to is also an AP

Does that sound about right yet?